Category: My Recent Posts

Every time under your warm shade A forgotten question goes answered All that is lost All that is about to goSeems so trivial under your might

What is it about you, sunset? For, you are a poem A moment of realisationYou come from the endless mumbling thoughts withinFrom the ultimate abyss of Nothing For, you are a tear A silent cry A painful journey. You are the end And you are the beginning.

What is it about you, sunset?For, it has been a while,
since I felt so alive What is it about you? That makes me realise Of a life less lived Every time.

Hi everyone,
My friends. My family. My acquaintances.
I write this post because I love you all and hence feel that I must officially inform you guys that I have PUT ON WEIGHT.

Yes, that horrendous thing that one must never become I have become that. My jeans are a few inches tighter on my hips, my face looks rounder than oval and flesh can be seen in my arms. Hence, I am just using the lingo that everybody seems to be more comfortable using – and notifying my dear ones that I have become “fat”. And before you make that pitiful face and go on to asking me “Why have I become SO fat!”, I just want you to know that – I don’t care.

I know what it feels like to feel fat. I know what it feels like growing up, with people around you – pointing out that extra weight on your hips, your arms, your waist, your face, your neck – wherever their scrutinising eyes could reach. And making cumulative assessment of your figure, they would go on to give tips about “fixing it”. Exercise. Stop eating junk. Drink lemon water. Then they would gleefully go back to their lives, finally having done something productive with their day – leaving a child, insecure and miserable. So, I know what it feels like to feel fat. And I say, “feel” – because I was never fat. I was healthy and bulky, which is my normal body type and I was made to feel that that was not a good figure. The good figure is one, with no flesh, bones sticking out, toned hands and legs and stomach and hips. So, I grew up convinced that I did not have that ideal figure. My “thunder thighs” definitely did not fall in that category.

But I aimed for it. I exercised day and night. That’s all I thought about. I wanted a perfect figure. I wanted to prove everybody wrong. I wanted to lose all the extra weight and look super pretty! Eyes would turn for me, I thought. I wanted to walk like Poo (from K3G)in my college. So, basically I lost a lot of weight.

The funny thing was –

I was close to a flat stomach (yea, that never happened) and my thighs were poles apart – but I always felt fat. Always felt insecure. No matter, how much I starved, how much I did yoga, exercised – I was never thin enough. But here’s the real catch. Now that I have become “Fat” (according to a lot of people in my life) – I don’t feel it. I don’t feel fat.

I feel happy. I feel satisfied. I feel healthy. I eat good food, I sleep well, I work very hard and I know that my job requires me to expend a lot of my energy and my time for it – and I don’t mind. I feel accomplished. Every morning, I wake up with the most wonderful heartbeat throbbing against me – something that I had never experienced before. I feel free. I feel secure. I feel fit. And I feel powerful.

So, I guess I am better off with that extra weight on me.

This post is not an answer to my friends calling me fat. You could call me a buffalo, for all you want. (But I know you would rather call me a hippopotamus) But this is a post, in which I wished to say that being fit is of utmost importance. Happiness, satisfaction, mental peace – comes from being fit. But that insecurity lying deep within us, does not make us fit. It makes us weak, vulnerable and I have seen in many cases, it can even lead to depression.

I just hope that there will come a time, when kids would not have a scarred childhood because of their weight. I just hope that someday people will understand that everybody has a different body type and to truly care, is to accept them the way they are and see beyond the hallmark of beauty set out there. I just hope that someday, calling somebody fat would not be an insult, but rather just a statement that wouldn’t scream of the society’s fuck up of this “idea of a good figure”.

Till then, lets just understand that – people don’t like being called fat. It brings back the memory of unnecessary insecurity of so many – and that too, for no good reason, but just because you were stupid enough to say it without much thought.

Merry christmas everybody!
To a healthy, lovely life ahead of us.
Santa Claus is also fat. Be like Santa Claus.
Cheers! ❤

Lately I have been having doubts about the decisions that I have taken in my life. Most of them are career oriented. I keep asking myself, have I been doing this right? Am I lost? Do I not know what I want to do next? I have been so confused at my own confusion and – I understand when that is related to love problems – but work? Wow. I never thought I would be confused about work. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And then something happened that is pretty much inevitable in general term called “life”. Change.

Now, I am a kind of person who loves change! I hate monotonous life. I just hate it. Its not like everyday needs to be unique or something but I have known myself to not handle routine life in a row. It gets me all worked up about how useless my life is, while people in Instagram have so much more exciting things to do.

That blabber aside – its been tough. And my workplace is not really a kind of place where you have the liberty to share your concerns such as these. You see – when you are in the film industry – you are here because of your passion. That’s it. Doubting the work you do (not the project) is almost like doubting your passion and that is looked down upon! I understand that. I have been judgmental in the past too. But since, that’s the past – I am not going to JUDGE myself about it anymore.

So after a lot of pent up emotions inside, I finally decided to share it with someone who I felt was trust-able and probably not judgmental. And I did. In the process of explaining it to this very kind woman (and an amazing writer!), I found myself asking her – if all this is worth it? She spent a lot of time listening to my woes and after some discussion I was finally able to understand my dilemma. So, I decided to not beat my head over it and wait for the right time and then do the right thing – as per the passion commands. But the question that I asked her, really bothered me! I mean – I did not know if being in one of the best places of the industry and getting to learn from the best people in the industry – was worth it or not? That’s scary. What do I want? I asked myself. And there was no answer. For a person, who is always so sure of herself and the decisions that she takes – this is sort of a panic attack.

And then I woke up this morning, did my one routine that I don’t get sick of doing – I made tea. (When I do get sick of it – I order it from the dairy downstairs. But its still the most routine of all the things I do. Don’t even get me started on my bowel movements!) Anyway – so I made tea and started reading a book. I had an hour to go to office and I always need some time for myself before I go to work – that’s the only way I can function in a normal manner for the rest of the day. So, I was reading this book and I had a sudden urge to write something. I immediately took my diary from my bedside drawer, my pen from the pen stand on the bedside drawer and settled myself on the huge cushion for my back, on the bed. And I looked outside – it was raining.

My windows are big. When I had taken up this house – that was all that I was sold with – the ample amount of windows in my house that led to a magnificent view of the greenery outside. That’s a tough gain in Mumbai and I can’t stop bragging about it. I looked at those trees outside and in the rain, the light green looked lighter and the dark green looked even more darker. What contrast! Their barks, so deep brown – were flaunting their beautiful scars. And it came to me, in the most poetic way possible. The answer to my question – this is why its all worth it.

I might not have a lot of time for myself, but when I do – its all mine. I am not worried about the next project because I am safe at this point. So, at this point – I can keep looking out of the window and remember how satisfying life is. Unless of course I lose my job and then I will have to worry – but until I don’t – I have this moment. I can pay my rent. I can pay for my groceries. I have a bedside drawer (Its important. I paid for it!). I have a space for myself that is my own and I might not have all the time in the world to think – but I have everything I need to sustain for myself – so that whenever I get the time, I have all the means to THINK. And I wouldn’t trade this for ANYTHING else in this entire world!

Yes. I am here because of my passion for films. But that does not mean that that part of me will always be satiated. And the last thing I want to do is pretend that it does. It won’t. Its very important to do what we love and its even more important to not make it a habit. We don’t want to end up eating snacks and be full by the time dinner’s ready. How will we enjoy our dinner otherwise? (imagine a high pitched squeaky voice saying that)

I realized that we tend to create a projection of our enlarged selves and then pose it to be real. We actually believe that people don’t see it. And we keep doing it because it tends to make us stronger, so we get quite convinced that that image is true. I don’t want to be captured in that image of myself. I don’t want to be captured in the philosophies and the wisdom of the philosophers. I want their wisdom to help me grow, not stunt it. I want it to make me powerful, not weak.

Like in the book, “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham,Virginia Woolf writes to her husband:

“Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.”

It was day when I left
and I haven’t looked out my window since.
Shit.
Its already night fall
Past 9.
What a life.
I have none, they say.
I like it.
I like it.
Chop chop. Some more.
A little more. Lets get it.
Done. done.

Tick. Tick.
I sit.
Staring at the screen,
the blue light that its emanating.
All my world,
the meaning, the comprehension,
the joke and the leisure.
Its all here.
And I can see it,
through this blue light that’s emanating.

Its a free world they say.
A much better world than what it used to be.
They had regulated television
and we have the freedom of internet.
Their sedition was crime.
Ours is anonymity.

Its a free world and yet not, they say.
We are loud and clear
so why are we not heard, they ask.
Change the subject, they say.
Distract with terms and decorated faces,
that mean nothing and yet our attention is theirs.

Who am I to crib, I wonder.
So many things waiting to be sketched from words
and yet no courage to spill the paint.
The voice is afraid
and so the change is yet to come.
They say. They say and they say.
And I put a stop to this.
My pen, my sword thumps on the ground
with a thud not so loud.
And I weep, weep without tears of hopelessness
but foreseeing the tragedy of the inevitable end.

I chose quiet.
Quieter than I thought I would be.
Only words that sum up
and have no meaning stay.
So, how does it matter
if I said something over nothing at all.
The uncanny chains remain the same.

How easy it used to be for me to criticise her. To make her feel that she wasn’t good enough; that she could have done much better but stuck herself to my father, to the “meaningless family life”.

Today while we were taking a walk in the morning, she pulled out my dad’s phone that she had specially bought to just click pictures of the flowers in the garden where we walk. I usually find it silly when she sends me a good morning message everyday at 8’o clock. I know she sends it to ‘all’ in her list. But what struck me this morning was not that she was clicking pictures of flowers to continue her religious commitment of her ‘good morning’ ritual – it was the look in her face when she was watching the flowers. She loved them. The colours, their shapes – the way she chose pure white ones to off-white ones, the way her face lit up when she saw a small garden patch of marigold flowers. ‘Aren’t they beautiful, bebu?’, she asked me. I said, yes. Truly, I did not even know what was so beautiful about them. And I felt so jealous. I thought I had been doing it all right. I was living my life to the fullest while she could not. That, she got ‘stuck’. And here I was, not even understanding her awe at the beauty of those bright orange globe-concentric shaped flowers.

I have usually been critical of her ever-so-happy demeanour. I would wonder how much she keeps inside her and criticise even more whenever in anger, I would hear some spite. I would tell her that she is better than that. I wonder, if she doesn’t want to be better than that. And whatever she has done so far, what I call the facade – is because I and people like me in her life kept telling her that she is better than that. I wonder, how much she has suffered, how much she has let go of. I wonder, if she has ever hated me and loved me at the same time by not letting me know so.

Today while she was watching the roses, more than sadness, I felt disgust for myself. I realised how I have put the people I love in boxes of my critical court and hammered them with my own insecurities of who I am and how they must be, to be with me. You would say that I must not be too hard on myself, but the truth is that I am not at all being hard on myself. This is me. My energy comes from critically accessing all parts of my being in the constant need to renew myself from who I am to who I want to be. But to subject people who love me on the same dais as mine, is just not fair.

I wonder why they do not complain. I wonder why she does not complain. Or, maybe she does but I can’t hear it, because I am too busy being convinced how she knows so little and I know so much more. That I am not disgusted with, though. I think all children at some point or the other feel that they are much smarter than their parents. And that is usually true – given that they come from them and have better adaptation to the present world and its obsessions more than their parents. They care about the world and their parents care about them. Children are smarter – definitely. But that’s not what am worried about. I am worried about, how little I know of the real world, of real people, of real things and of real feelings. If I show this write – up to my mother, she would wonder what I am talking about, probably even say that its amazing while never comprehending what I actually mean. She wouldn’t understand that I am jealous of her. And that is what am most jealous of – the fact that she doesn’t know what it feels to not feel about the real, tiny happiness existing in bright yellow petals out there.

Writing is like therapy. When we read somebody else’s banter of wisdom, most times it feels like a pile of crap unless it’s of course quoted by somebody with some “validation”. I have a million thoughts everyday. I can’t talk about anybody else, but I can’t stop thinking. And everytime I go back to my diary and read through its pages, I notice myself contradicting my own wise words more than anything else. Sometimes I am in awe of myself. Earlier, my writing was a flow and I envy that earlier self. Today, I feel forced. I do it out of habit, habit to keep talking to myself, habit to stay restless or to find some “meaning” every single day. It’s infuriating. I feel so old.

Breathe.

Just so you know and for the people who are interested in this inconsequential banter – I am in love. Unlike people who talk about the abounding beauty of love, I think it’s nothing less than a world war inside my head.

I hate it.

I liked being single. My mind used to be restless for knowledge instead of thinking about his touch the night before. I used to create stories out of my fantasies and my happy hormone used to kick in with so much of hope.

And now – I am living a nightmare. Every week and I mean – every single week is a roller coaster ride and I don’t like roller coaster rides. When I went to Imagica a few months before, I did not play a single one of those “deadly thrilling rides”. No thanks, but I would rather not kill myself with the anticipation of having a heart attack in any of those insides-coming-out-as-lungs-fall-off rides. Same reason, why I don’t watch horror films.

So basically, I don’t like being in love. But I know there’s no getting away because I have a wise side too – which knows that I am going to regret letting it go when I am all wrinkly with a cat for company. You know what comes with this “deadly feeling of love”? Possessiveness, insecurity and if you are a self critical, realistic person – then, misery. I am miserable. Yes, like crying out loud miserable. And mostly, sad. Perhaps because I know that the only person who can make me happy is the person I am in love with. And that is sad. Even if all the great lovers of the history would say that it’s not, their record of screwing up is so bad that it’s not very encouraging you see.

They say frustration is important for satisfaction. Allow me to quote this interesting piece by Adam Phillips which I picked up from my favourite website – brainpickings.org :

However much you have been wanting and hoping and dreaming of meeting the person of your dreams, it is only when you meet them that you will start missing them. It seems that the presence of an object is required to make its absence felt (or to make the absence of something felt). A kind of longing may have preceded their arrival, but you have to meet in order to feel the full force of your frustration in their absence.

[…]

Falling in love, finding your passion, are attempts to locate, to picture, to represent what you unconsciously feel frustrated about, and by.

[…]

All love stories are frustration stories… To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration that you didn’t know you had.

I wonder if all lovers try to help themselves in their illusionistic utopian world and console themselves that it’s okay. Because in reality, they are in deep shit and there is no way one can walk out. If you are a good artist, then you are good at convincing your misery to be utopian too.

I am doing a lot of breathing exercises these days. I am not constricted up my windpipe. I am just in ridiculous pressure of being in love.

I repeat. It sucks. And like most therapy sessions, this one ends with more confusion too.